Setting the record straight (Publ. 11/03/2007) An article about the rape of young woman in Palo Alto failed to explain the status of a serial rapist who terrorized the Peninsula in 1995. Romel Reid Sr. of East Palo Alto, who was 28 years old at the time, was sentenced on Aug. 28, 1998, to two terms of 56 years to life.

The line of SUVs and sedans idling at Gunn High School in Palo Alto was longer than usual Thursday as parents waited to pick up their kids instead of letting them walk home alone.

Erica Chan, 17, took two friends along when she walked to Starbucks a half mile away. And Maridee Charlton, jogging along a nearby path, kept looking nervously over her shoulder.

“I’m thinking of getting a small cell phone just to have and pre-program it to 911,” Charlton said.“It was pretty stressful running out there today. I’m looking at everything, hearing sounds. It’s scary.”

A rapist was still on the loose Thursday after abducting and sexually assaulting a 17-year-old Gunn High School student on her way home from school two days earlier. It’s been 12 years since there was this kind of fear in Palo Alto. In 1995, women were so scared of a serial rapist that some started carrying knives to protect themselves. But over the years, a sense of safety returned to this upscale community.

Then, on Tuesday, a rapist grabbed the high school senior as she locked up her bike at her family’s apartment just a few blocks away from the school on Arastradero Road.

The afternoon attack just off a busy thoroughfare brought back unsettling memories and prompted many residents to rethink their basic routines.

“I’m not taking any chances,” said Tammy Huynh who was waiting to pick up her two teenage sons after school.

She was worried about her boys. She hasn’t allowed them to ride their bikes since the attack and has instructed them to lock the doors and windows when they’re home. She, too, has skipped jogging outside. Instead, she plans to switch to her treadmill at home.

“I’m paranoid,” she said.

Police distributed hundreds of fliers with a sketch of the suspect Thursday afternoon along Fair Oaks Boulevard in Sunnyvale where the bloodied girl escaped from her attacker’s stopped vehicle later Tuesday afternoon. They had blanketed Palo Alto with the sketch a day before. Theyalso have fielded calls from people asking how to protect themselves and their children.

Reports of rape by strangers are rare in Palo Alto, but the numbers are much higher when most of Santa Clara County is included.

At the YWCA Rape Crisis Center, counselors hear from about 1,000 victims a year who say they have been sexually assaulted. Some of them may be cases from years earlier that they never reported, said the center’s director, Sandy Davis. Of those cases, about 40 say they were assaulted by strangers.

Stranger rapes are the “jump-out-of-the-bushes” type of rape and don’t include date rape or acquaintance rape, says Davis. Her center handles cases from South San Jose to Palo Alto.

The YWCA’s numbers are slightly less than the national average, which shows 15 percent of all rapes are committed by strangers, she said. The rape crisis center receives more reports than police, she said, because some victims are more willing to confide in rape counselors.

“We respond to virtually every sexual assault brought to the hospital,” Davis said. “Some don’t make it to the media’s attention.”

Most vulnerable

The most vulnerable group of women, she said, are between ages 15 and 25.

“They’re more out and about, and they probably don’t fear for their mortality like women who have matured a little bit,” Davis said. “There is more partying, more alcohol, sometimes drugs, which really puts a woman in a greater vulnerable position for an assault.”

But Tuesday’s assault had none of those risk factors, except the girl was 17 and alone.

In 1995, it was a serial rapist named Romel Reid who terrorized the Peninsula. He raped at least two women in Palo Alto, forcing one woman into his van on a September morning and attacking another woman along Middlefield Road three months later.

Violent police encounters in California last year led to the deaths of 157 people and six officers, the state attorney general’s office said Thursday in a report that provides the first statewide tally on police use-of-force incidents.